Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s fifth year as Ukraine’s president ended on May 20, 2024. He kept the job. Voice of America noted that the law gives a president five years, but elections have been put off while the country stays under martial law.
Zelenskyy addressed the question himself in an interview with Reuters. “My five years are not over yet. They continue due to martial law,” he said, as Ukrinform reported on May 21, 2024. He added that “independence doesn’t just happen without trials” and called it a shame that the trials were so hard. The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada said a presidential vote would be held within 60 days of martial law ending.
Why he stays in office
An election had originally been planned for late March 2024. It was postponed because of the fighting and martial law, and parliamentary elections are suspended too, ConstitutionNet reported. Legal experts told the outlet that Zelenskyy’s powers last until a successor is sworn in. “The president does not automatically lose his powers five years after inauguration,” said Andriy Mahera of the Center of Policy and Legal Reform in Kyiv. Those powers end only “when the newly elected president takes office.”
The Constitutional Court may be asked to settle the timing question. The president, the government, the Supreme Court, 45 parliamentarians or the parliament’s human rights commissioner can file such a petition. Reports from late February said Zelenskyy’s office was preparing one through members of the Servant of the People party.
Three promises from 2019
Voters gave Zelenskyy 73 percent in the 2019 presidential election. Mykhailo Minakov of the Kennan Institute wrote in a May 21, 2024 assessment that they expected three things: peace with Russia in the Donbas, cleaner government after Petro Poroshenko, and better lives for ordinary families.
Peace did not hold. Zelenskyy first secured a cease-fire in the Donbas, but the Minsk process stalled after the Paris Summit in December 2019. Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, turned the conflict into a full-scale war.
On governance, Minakov found that the oligarchs’ hold on politics is minimal now. Better governance has not followed, though. Corruption still undermines the public sector, he wrote.
The economic numbers moved with the war. Ukraine’s GDP per capita on a purchasing power parity basis stood at approximately $12,800 when Zelenskyy took office, and by 2021 it had nearly recovered to the pre-Euromaidan level of $13,000. A projection for 2023 put it below $11,000.
Zelenskyy is the sixth president since Ukraine’s independence. During the war he signed a mobilization act that was controversial, despite the political risks involved. Minakov’s bottom line: Zelenskyy could not fully deliver on his campaign promises given the turns history took after 2019, but there is evidence he stuck to his electoral program.
Sources
- Five Years of Zelensky's Presidency (Kennan Institute / Wilson Center, Mykhailo Minakov)
- Ukrainian president's term officially ends during martial law, constitutional court may be asked to rule on timing of future elections (ConstitutionNet, Igor Burdyga)
- Zelensky says his presidential tenure not over due to martial law (Ukrinform)
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy marks 5 years as president of Ukraine (Voice of America, Kateryna Besedina)
